Sunday, February 24, 2013

Inside report

Legal educators are still fantasizing that law firms will create more positions for new lawyers. The latest pipe dream suggests that big firms will "give talented graduates of less prestigious institutions a chance to shine" in residencies that teach lawyering skills. Although the firms will retain only some of the residents, a compassionate bar association will require those firms to "offer stipends to help those residents who don't make the cut but have debt burdens."

Law firms, as I've suggested before, must find this advice hilarious. Will partners eagerly step forward to train more associates than they need? Are BigLaw firms excited about teaching these extra associates how to handle eviction cases for low-income clients? Are bar members pining to reduce their income to help new lawyers pay off their massive law school debts?

I think not. Law firms are businesses competing in a harsh climate. Law schools vie to land jobs for their graduates, but that's bush league competition: We only have to worry about jobs for one year, we can create low-paid jobs of our own, and we can play games with the numbers. Law firms compete in the real market, one where the bills have to be paid every year, clients would laugh if you asked them to create some work for you, and playing games with the bottom line is fraud or embezzlement.

The report recognizes that "since 2008, law firms have cut back significantly on their hiring and have gone through several rounds of lay-offs of both legal and non-legal staff." Despite those cuts, the firms still suffer from "overcapacity in terms of the number of lawyers available to perform the work at hand." And the problem isn't resolving, it's getting worse: "In the four years since [2008], with demand growth negative to flat, the overcapacity problem has become even more serious." (p. 16)

What's the solution? "Firms have . . . begun to move toward more flexible staffing models, expanding their use of non-partner track associates, staff attorneys, and contract lawyers. Going forward, it is likely that firms will remain conservative in their hiring policies, even as demand begins to grow. As a result, firms probably will be relatively smaller in terms of the number of partners and traditional partner-track associates and relatively larger in terms of the number of other lawyers and non-lawyer professionals." (p. 16)

So, yes, law firms are developing new staffing models. But these are not residencies designed to train new professionals or assist the poor. These are jobs that will help equity partners maintain their profits. And these jobs will not provide more opportunities for "talented graduates of less prestigious institutions" to show their ability. As jobs for conventional partner-track associates continue to decline, even T14 graduates will compete for these new positions--hoping for their "chance to shine."

Law firms do find one bright spot in today's legal market: it is the oversupply of lawyers. The Georgetown report recognizes this quite candidly: "While excess capacity in the market is certainly not good news for young lawyers or, for that matter, law schools, it provides an environment in which law firms should have the flexibility to redesign their staffing models to respond to client demands. By embracing alternative approaches to staffing--including increased use of staff attorneys and non-partner track associates, contract lawyers, and part-time attorneys--firms can create more efficient and cost effective ways to deliver legal services." (p. 17)

It's hard to find a more brutal statement of market reality than that one: the glut of lawyers created by law schools is allowing law firms to hire those graduates on increasingly contingent and unattractive terms. These new jobs are not designed to train new lawyers in skills they can take to other job sites. Once you have worked two years as a back-office document reviewer, what professional skills do you have--other than reviewing documents? These jobs will serve the economic interest of law firms.

And before any legal educators get all huffy about how law firms should recognize their professional obligations rather than simply operating as businesses: How many law faculty are voluntarily taking pay cuts to reduce tuition? How many are contributing substantial amounts to loan-repayment assistance plans? How many are voluntarily changing what they teach, or the time they devote to research, in order to lower the cost of legal education? How many devote 40 hours a year (one week) to serving low-income clients directly? How many spend that time training or supervising other lawyers in providing that service?

There are some professors who do these things, just as there are some law firm partners who forego income to mentor new lawyers. But there aren't very many. Law schools, just like law firms, have become full-bore businesses. The controlling members of these businesses, equity partners and tenured professors, serve their own interests and maximize their take-home pay.

In a market system, there's nothing wrong with businesses maximizing profit. The problem, with both law firms and law schools, is that we clothe ourselves in the rhetoric and privileges of a profession while pursuing market goals. As clients have gained the information they need to assert their interests--and newbusinesses have emerged to serve those interests--it's our students and new lawyers who pay the price for our duplicity.

158 comments:

Law schools would be the recipients of less piss and venom if they weren't so self-righteous about the whole thing.

Law is a profession, but one that operates in a competitive marketplace. Cost matters.

The barriers to entry require an "all pay" auction of attending law school.

The federal government has allowed law schools to soak students with a "buy now, pay later" type of funding.

Schools are fiscally undisciplined, and want more resources with less accountability. This is understandable from a human standpoint, but it dooms discrete and insular minority groups (a/k/a your students) who are in an unequal bargaining position and who often naively believe your lies touting your altruism.

He has an op-ed in the N.Y. Times. Dean O'Brien has a connection to the Chief Justice of SCOTUS. They're all influential, rich, powerful and raking in money. Look at the ass raping they handed you in court.

You losers don't seem to get it.

You're losers. They're winners.

It has nothing to do with law school. If law schools were all abolished, winners would dominate you in some other realm.

Now go write your blogs and comments like the loser bitches you are, pretending that law school is responsible for all of your life's failures.

1. Bankruptcy reform to make debt dischargeable 7 years after leaving school.

2. Cap or eliminate the about of direct federal funding for law school.

Steps 1 and 2 will return some semblance of market normalcy to law schools. It will make students less likely to be slaves upon graduation. It will protect taxpayers from the law school lies and IBR's and PAYE's public subsidy.

No, but you wouldn't want to file for bankruptcy in the first place. The idea is to put the horizon far enough out there so that only those drowning under debt use it. Maybe 8 years. Maybe 10 years. There should come a point when a debtor can get out from the sentence. Even most murders only do a finite term.

255 here. I for one would GLADLY file for bankruptcy and take the credit hit if the DoE would give me back all that money. I don't like to borrow money anyway.

Maybe my sarcasm didn't come across in my earlier post. Okay, I'll level with you: making student loans dischargeable is profoundly unfair to taxpayers - and doubly so for taxpayers who have already paid off their own loans. Why SHOULDN'T such people get their money back too?

As some people see I from time to time post on Prawfsblawg or the Faculty lounge. Usually when a member of the professoriate posts something particularly inane - like an idea that the solution to law school tuition is to get law firms to contribute to the cost of running law schools (why would they?)

Law professors are increasingly exhibiting the Kübler-Ross five statges of grief, though many are at different stages. Those stages, as widely known are:

1. Denial — a be conscious or unconscious refusal to accept facts, information, or the reality of the situation. Denial is a defense mechanism and some people can become locked in this stage. See one Prof. Diamond as an example.

2. Anger — '"Who is to blame?" Many blame Campos and Tamahama at this stage. Brian Leiter is a pretty good example.

3. Bargaining — the hope that one can somehow postpone or delay the inevitable - examples "IBR will save us," 'International LLMs will save us" "A market recovery will save us" and well the idea this posting is about.

I'm surprised that law schools are looking to law firms. The knee-jerk reaction of universities has been to turn to the federal government for bailouts, grants, subsidies, deductions, etc. Has Uncle Sugar's well finally run dry?

The law schools are pretending that it is just a matter of imparting more practical skills, rather than a need to shut down law schools, since that has real consequences for law school deans and faculty.

Of course, the law schools are also peddling the fantasy that the average American requires much more in the way of legal services then they are receiving today, so there is allegedly an enormous unmet demand for attorneys.

You'd have 15,000 law graduates per year. They could actually find paid work as lawyers. Everyone would bitch about having to spend one month a year on unpaid pro-bono work, but both the unmet needs of the poor and the need to make a living as a lawyer would be met.

This annual special report focuses on what, for many law students, is the bottom line: ­whether they stand any chance in hell of landing a coveted ­associateship at a major law firm. We found that the picture was marginally brighter — but that isn’t saying much. We also examine trends in the hiring market, including a decline in large-firm participation in on-campus interviews. It’s less that they no longer believe in the cattle show … than that firms have fewer entry-level jobs to fill. Some elite law graduates, meanwhile, are finding a new appreciation for the charms of midsize firms.

Where exactly are all the "talented graduates of less prestigious institutions"? My institution, one of the most prestigious, houses nincompoops by the boatload. There must be a few talented students coming out of a Vanderbilt or an Iowa or a Colorado, but I cannot believe that talent issues forth in waves from every Seton Hall or Santa Clara or Cooley.

"So, yes, law firms are developing new staffing models. But these are not residencies designed to train new professionals or assist the poor. These are jobs that will help equity partners maintain their profits."

1. A chance to shine? Shine for whom? When the residency is over you will still have no job and only have experience representing people who cannot afford a lawyer.

2. Law firms are all about time and profit. They ruthlessy throw out associates who do not turn a profit for them. Now the same partners are going to play fairy godmothers to people who are generating no revenue? Who is going to pay for the office space and the computers?

4. A person making $52,000 a year is making $25.00 an hour. Around here lawyers charge$250.00 an hour and up. They can't charge less and make enough money to justify the shitty lifestyle. Spend forty hours on a case and the client is out over 25% of one year's after-tax income. It doesn't work any more, and it never will work again. Time was the easy, fixed fee stuff solos and small firms did like real estate closings and wills was so easy to come by that it all worked out. Now those lawyers are clawing each others' eyes out over scraps. A lawyer I know who used to do high volume residential real estate, and do well at it, recently told me there are days that the only time he picks up the phone is to make sure there is a dial tone.

And OBTW, Farmer says he's opening a clinic that will employ some of his recent graduates. How will those jobs figure into the job stats for Rutgers-Newark.

This is no pipe dream, it is another gimmick to wave in front of gullible applicants to make them think that everything will work out for them if they just borrow all that money.

opening up the clinic will help his law students, they will qualify for public service loan repayment. loans paid in full by the gov't in only ten years with no tax hit. Moreover they make his stats look better. Its a win win for Farmer and his students. Brilliant, and just what any good business man would do. He sees an opportunity and he takes it.

1. I am not fully aware of how the public service loan repayment deal works, but Farmer says his new clinic will employ "recent" graduates. Ten years out ain't recent in any man's language. My guess is they'll go under the bus soon after they no longer count for employment stats.

2. Look at what Farmer is doing. He is taking money his students are paying in tuition for an education and giving it to unemployed recent graduates to gin up the employment numbers to sucker in future students. If that's being a good businessman then Charles Ponzi was the greatest businessman who ever lived.

Law schools sell neither practical lawyering skills nor the ability to "think like a lawyer."

No, they sell hope. They sell hope to gullible 0Ls. They sell hope to the naive who believe that educators are altruistic. They sell hope to those who believe in the educational establishment. They sell hope to everyone who ever watched To Kill a Mockingbird or Judgment at Nuremberg or Law and Order and thought, "ain't lawyering a great way to make a living."

In the last few years, it's become clear that there is little hope for this profession. When the probability of a "good" outcome for a would be applicant falls from 1 in 2 or 1 in 3 students to 1 in 50 or 1 in 100 students, there ceases to be any meaningful distinction between selling hope and outright fraud.

Law schools, you're selling lottery tickets, very expensive lottery tickets knowing damn well that almost no one will win. And unlike the poor sons of bitches who buy scratch-offs for $1 to $5 each, your lottery ticket costs $100,000 to $200,000 each, and it's backed by the taxpayer.

You, law faculty, are horrible people. You are shameful parasites who sell lies to the naive.

I am a person in a position to hire new law graduates. I'll leave it at that.

My conscience compels me to, against my better business judgment, acknowledge the truth: the fact that law schools have been gluttonously over-enrolling over the past decade has been a boon for law firms, particularly in light of the current business landscape.

We're getting the equivalent of an MIT grad to do work equivalent to a few bucks (no benefits, form 1099) an hour to design a residential sprinkler system. And they're grateful for it!

Needless to say, the folks we "hire" from this pool likely carry alot of debt, and I often wonder, how can they get by?

You know it's really a tough market when you hire folks from your alma mater at a pittance as a favor (or more truthfully, to shut up the persistent annoying career services assistant dean)...

So, to those oblivious law professors and administrators advocating apprenticeship models, I thank you in advance, but question your ethical and moral grounding: you must know that the way you’ve increased the cost of a legal education in relation to the true employment options of your product (which you’ve been able to hide for a long time) don’t make any sense.

You must work for a third rate organization. I am a hiring partner at a major law firm that the competition for COMPETENT law grades is as fierce as ever. That's why we pay $160,000/year. We need to in order hire people who are careful and can think logically. You'd be amazed how careless and stupid the average law school grad is.

By the way you're not getting the equivalent of an MIT grad. We hire them work in our IP group and they are very bright, hardworking and careful. Nothing like the idiots you get when you try to pay bargain basement prices for legal talent.

No, the truth is you can get those same $160,000 people at bargain basement prices- if you hire more experienced people.

You can get Harvard Law Review at bargain basement in some areas and can get former BigLaw partners. The job losses and glut in the profession is severe enough that there is a glut of top grades/ top schools/ law review/ former V250 partners, former Assistant U.S. Attorneys on the market from top schools.

These experienced lawyers cannot find real jobs. They all started at $160,000 or the top rate at their law school graduation, and many of them will work for much less now.

Actually, 5:29, you are a sucker. You really think you have to pay $160,000 for a competent law grad? In this market? You're out of your mind. But please, keep paying it--at least a few graduates will win the lottery that way (to the extent that 70+ hour weeks and a high chance of washout are "winning").

Farmer: "Lawyers cost too much in part because of rates established during the economic bubbles of the past 15 years. No less than in the dot-com or real-estate or derivatives markets, the cost of legal services became unsustainable. The recession worsened, but did not cause, the predicament now: a mountain of student debt and dearth of legal jobs, even as there is a crying need for legal services."

Farmer doesn't seem to understand that solo and small law firms do not set their prices based on economic bubbles. We set them based on what our clients can afford and the going market rate in our local market environment. He also doesn't seem to understand that with overhead and expenses, even a discount lawyer cannot charge less then a plumber in their area if they want to stay in business.

Law professors have no idea about the realities of the practice of law outside government law departments, biglaw, or public interest positions.

They assume that all of the "other" jobs are attainable and that the pro se litigation problem would be solved if only the ignorant shitlawyers would see the light and drop their rates. Why didn't we think of that?? No wonder you're in the tower you fount of wisdom!

You must bill $150 per hour, because of your overhead. Any newbie who tries to solicit work at $75 per hour does several things. 1. He makes it up with the quantity of hours he uses to do the service. 2. He commits malpractice as he doesn't know what he's doing. 3. He loses money, but is willing to do so to get some actual experience and knowledge.

Once you get to the point that you would actually like to make a living practicing law, and not be a hobbyist, you must charge a minimum of $100 per hour or you will not make a living of at least $40k per year or have health care.

As most people who went to law school would like a lifestyle that pays $40k or more and would like healthcare, charging less is not tenable.

I'd be down for Farmer's residency plan, provided it consist of something he's totally unwilling to do. Limit the number of seats at law schools to the number of residency spots, and have the number of residency spots equal the BLS estimate of legal jobs for lawyers 3 years' hence.

So, 2 years of law school, 2 years of paid residency, only 20,000 lawyers. Sounds good to me.

I'm always struck by how college and law school administrators talk about making education "affordable" versus it being "cheap." Those words have very different meanings. Affordable is a floor- something is affordable when it is within your means to access. That doesn't mean it is cheap- something can be very expensive, but a payment plan can be structured to make it affordable.

Yeah, that letter, from an individual who is now the president of Harvard University, but who graduated from Bryn Mawr in 1968, is laughable.

She has NO idea how much the world has changed. For example, if she had had a student loan to repay [she doesn't indicate if she did] what was its amount, what was the interest rate, and how long [in terms of years of salary] would it take to repay it?

This "follow your dreams; it will all turn out okay" is CRAP, peddled by those who are rich enough to permit their kids to do so, or by those who have no problem enslaving kids in a lifetime of debt.

Yes, Farmer, let's extend the length of legal training by two years instead of actually reforming the legal curriculum, because god forbid that schools expand their clinical opportunities in lieu of even more moronic _________ Law and Philosophy courses, and make law school mirror the actual practice of law. That's just crazy talk.

Does anyone else find it odd that the law schools have not begun to engage in cannibalism yet?

One would think that the good but not great, and quite vulnerable (that's you Vanderbilt, Tulane, GW, Emory, Wash St Louis, USC) would start to attack the lower-ranked scammers. If I were tenured at Vandy, I'd be pretty pissed to be suffering because the ABA allows places like Pace, Florida International, Suffolk, etc. to charge the same and to obtain the same federal dollars in an overcrowded market -- to say nothing of the 6 Cooley campuses.

If my decent neighborhood and great lifestyle was threatened by the blighted subprime roulette wheel down the road, I'd be mad as hell.

Yet you don't see it. Why? Why are the scammers sticking together? I want infighting!

Some standalones will die, but what I think you will see initially is a wave of mergers.

For example (purely hypothetically), the University of San Francisco and Santa Clara University are both Jesuit schools with poorly ranked law schools located about 50 miles from each other.

One could easily envision that the law schools could merge (complete with a press release explaining how wonderful this will be for law students), and locate on a single campus.

If the single campus was Santa Clara (again, purely hypothetically), the school could be called Santa Clara/USF Law for a few years, and then default back to Santa Clara Law.

The problem with a merger (aside from the amusement of watching the administrators fight to the death for their jobs), is that law school is labor-intensive, and the most expensive faculty are the the tenured ones. A solution that kept the tenured faculty from both schools, while firing all the cheaper faculty, probably isn't viable in the long run.

Please make the following reforms to grad school lending. This will not cost the government money, indeed it will save money. It will not harm students, indeed it will help them. It will screw over the law schools and will limit the number of lawyers and MBAs to the quantity demanded by market forces. You're welcome in advance.

1. Stafford-style loans for grad school capped at $20,000 per year. Private lenders can pick up any deficiency;

2. Student debt dischargable in bankruptcy after 7 years.

3. If any federal debt is discharged, the principal amount of the debt (but not the interest) is recourse against the originating institution (read law school). This is a condition for playing with federal dollars in the first place.

So, law schools, watch your tuition and watch your budgets, and watch your size. If your students are too indebted, they'll be saved, and you'll be screwed.

Not surprised at all to see rich white kids attack student loans when its the only way minority and the poor can go to law school. I've got news for you. Diversity is important and valuable to society. The supreme court agrees as does the president. Its just you rich, bitter white kids that don't understand we need to give everyone a chance.

There have been more bad public policies enacted in the last 30 years in this country in the name of reform, equality, and openness -- which have everything to do with politics and money and nothing to do with reform, equality and openness -- that it's difficult to tell where the true social problem stops and the bullshit starts.

Education is expensive. Government involvement has driven the cost up and made it more out of reach of everyone. Everyone's now equal in their debt, misery and chains. You're a damn fool if you think we're better off for the government's involvement in educational funding.

Used to be a poor kid could obtain education with a job. Now he can obtain it with federal money, and never obtain a job. It's not a better system.

All that matters is your intention, not the outcome. This policy is intended to help the poor or disadvantaged minorities. therefore, i'm morally superior to you and you're elitist and racist.

What? My policy has unintended consequences that makes the groups I purport to help worse off? Well, fuck you elitists and racists, my motives are pure and that's all that matters. Outcomes and consequences are the realm of the real world, and have no place in academia or public policy.

A huge reason why many bad law schools (and bad colleges generally) exist in the first place AND haven't shut down is that any suggestion they do so, is shouted down as "an attack on the most vulnerable" "a hatred of education" "disproportionately affecting underrepresented communities" or "imperiling diversity."

That's why a school like Cooley can say it has no interest in reducing its intake, as its mission is inclusiveness.

Doesn't make them worse off because with the gov't pay as you earn program they don't have to pay off their loans; the gov't does. Dean Farmer is making it even better by giving them opportunities for public interest work which pays off the loans sooner with no tax hit.

Maybe the reason you can't get a job as an attorney is that your approach to advocacy is to just make stuff up and ignore the facts. Gov't based programs to pay off student loans have been discussed extensively here. The may hurt taxpayers but the sure help graduates.

That Dean Farmer has some nerve to suggest this band aid cure to a cancerous tumor. What Farmer suggests is analogous to a car manufacturer making defective cars and asking the automotive service industry to repair the cars for free while the manufacturer makes all the profit.

I will not take on any volunteers of JD grad clerks as I gain nothing from training them. Mentoring takes time and time costs money. Why won't the law professors mentor the students after they graduate? Why must it be a law firm's "professional responsibility" to train people to represent people on my dime? I don't want to hear about how the practice of law is a privilege. I paid my motherfucking dues. I took on the debt, wasted three years in mindless courses being "taught" by "professors" who were just collecting a check while being put out to pasture. I pay dues every year, I do a pro bono case or two a year, I pay client protection fees, CLE fees, and comply with the onerous rules that the bar imposes on attorneys. Now fuckers like Farmer want me to take on the responsibility of doing the job he should have done (i.e., training lawyers)? Fuck his proposal and fuck him too. I bet this guy Farmer never worked a day in his life in private practice. He sounds like a former government attorney who doesn't know the value of a private attorney's time.

If a kid wants to learn the ropes from me, he better cough up my hourly rate ($550.00/hr.) if he wants to learn how to practice.

If you take kids on, you are providing clinical legal education. For this you deserve to be paid law professor rates. That's about $200,000 divided by the 200 hours law professors work each year, or $1,000 per hour. Double your hourly rate. The students will be better off too. Even paying you $1,000 per hour, they'll being less than were as law students.

"How many law faculty are voluntarily taking pay cuts to reduce tuition?"

Good question. Some are more in a position than others to take pay cuts, depending on how much they make. For example, this professor making $252K in 2011 (probably more now) is probably one of the highest paid non-Dean outside of the T-14 in the country. I wonder if she has taken a cut?

I don't disagree with anything you've said here, but big law firms are doing incredibly well despite the doom and gloom rhetoric. According to Citi, average profits were up by 4.3% in 2012: http://www.americanlawyer.com/PubArticleALD.jsp?id=1202587253629&slreturn=20130124190812 . Most businesses would take that, and as you note, law firms often imply that they are not just businesses. Why is it somehow out-of-bounds to expect law firms, like law schools, to slightly change the way to operate to benefit the profession as a whole?

First, it isn't their problem that the ROI on 75% of law schools no longer justifies the attendance of most prospective students. If half of the law schools in America closed their doors for good tomorrow, law firms would still have more than enough human capital produced for their needs every year.

Also, law schools have resisted any sort of change ("slight" or otherwise) tooth and nail, so why wouldn't law firms do the same if it cost them money or time?

That's only if you measure law school as a monetary investment. to do so ignores the lifetime of benefits that come from having a JD and the versatility of a degree that enables you to think like a lawyer.

Have you considered that average profits are up not because revenues are up, but because costs are down? Sure, I'd love to see a profession where the biglaw partners didn't no-offer SAs because their PPP was threatened and didn't Latham first-years, but once the Boomers took the reins all that went out the window along with a semblance of work-life balance.

What we are talking about here is taking T6 law grads on a 1099 if and when the law firms or other legal employers need them. Totally illegal mind you, if not done thru a temp agency, but what lawyer will complain - it's work, and work is very hard to get.

Maybe there is a large litigation that requires doc review or research. Maybe there is a change in the law that requires revising many legal documents over the next year. Hire a T6 grad on a temporary contract and fire the person after a little while when the work ends. There is no demand for that T6 grad once the gig ends.

That is the story of what has happened to me over the last decade. All temporary work. I don't do doc review, but there is no ability for me to get a real permanent full time legal job. Sure the jobs pay okay, if I can get them. Problem is that I am unemployed as much as employed. So the overall pay is not great. Much worse than for a school teacher or cop in my area.

So much for the 95% employment rate at my T6. It does not hold for experienced grads. It is probably not even 59% full time permanent legal employment when you go several years out.

I spend huge amounts of time doing employment applications. Employment applications have been my most common daily chore for years now - in between my temporary gigs.

In house is not an option. Once a lawyer hits the age of 50, and I am over 50, there are no in house jobs where that person "fits" unless one is a white male, in which case a "fit" where people are "comfortable" with the over 50 stiff may be remotely possible.

Law is sh_t career. I am so sorry I went to a T6 law school.

The one thing I can say is that I did have a good career for many years- before the legal profession got so glutted.

I just pray for the younger T6 grads. They bought themselves a bag of coal.

Anybody who went to law school outside the T6 in the last decade has themselves to blame. They got what is coming to them because they did not do their homework.

I will not say. One thing I will say is that both of these schools ought to focus on retraining their unemployed grads so these grads can join the labor force. I think a lot of Columbia and NYU grads, even those who at one point had good jobs (BigLaw, U.S. Attorney) need help in terms of finding full time permanent employment.

It would surely be a help to be able to get an internship in human resources or compliance. Anything would be a help if I did not have to spend day after day on futile employment applications, cold calls and ridiculous calls to everyone I know asking for help in finding work.

You had me until the last FU to anyone going to law school in the past 10 years.

The past 4 or 5? Sure, you could argue that there were a lot of warning signs. Before that? Not so much. With all of the law school baloney about employment stats, it's not surprising people fell for the scam before the scam-blogs came about (and the NYTimes stories). Before that? Not so much.

So, I'm sorry your career hasn't turned out like you hoped. However, your disdain for others in the same situation as yourself show you to be bitter and angry, and that certainly makes me less sympathetic towards your plight.

I have spent huge amounts of time networking with colleagues trying to get work and huge amounts of time directly contacting potential clients where my expertise may fit their needs,in addition to employment applications. None of this is effectual to produce a full time permanent legal job.

Most of the work in what I do is done in BigLaw, much in the transactional context. It is done by associates who are subject to up or out policies and a small number of permanent employees (partners, counsel in permanent positions or to a lesser extent in house lawyers).

The number of permanent positions is stagnant or contracting. BigLaw is training more and more associates in the area, and they have to leave.

The inevitable result here is a class of unemployed lawyers like me, many from T6 schools, for whom there is no demand, except occasional 1099 work.

The problem is that I can apply to work till the cows come home. If the demand is not there, and it is surely not there now, I wasted my time getting a T6 degree, or at least that degree is useless from now on.

The question is: go back and try to compete for entry level college grad work to get a permanent job? At my age? Or live a life of unsuccessful employment applications to legal jobs?

The post was written a little while ago, not today, and the link is below. It says that LawProf wrote it.

I guess you know better and believe that a lawyer with a top academic record who cannot work is appropriately called a "dumb fuck" with a "pathetic life".

I am sure you are doing better. You are the BigLaw partner who is heading a big firm and has so much business that you will triumphantly ride off into the sunset with a going away dinner for hundreds at the time you chose. Or you are that federal court clerk who simply cannot chose among the many job offers. Or you are that SEC staff lawyer with a secure job who is doing well and has been there for years in a great job.

The question here is what is happening in the profession as a result of the move to short term temporary work by large law firms and the contraction in legal hiring by such firms. If my post is not relevant even though I have extensive experience as a full time permanent BigLaw lawyer, then very little is. I think much of my law school class is similarly situated as are many people in younger classes at Columbia, NYU and other top law schools.

Maybe the reason you can't get a job is that, despite your age and claimed experience, you never learned the difference between an anecdote and a statistical analysis. There are people in every profession who couldn't hack it because of mental illness (that they are often not aware of), substance abuse (about which they are often in denial) lack of intelligence, laziness or just being a jerk. So you're personal experience proves absolutely nothing.

My crowd is former V250 partners and counsel, and lawyers who held high level positions in house. All of us worked for a long time in highly respectable positions, and we are all struggling now.

There is a change in the legal profession. Jobs are harder to keep,and more of them are temporary. There are very limited numbers of full time permanent legal jobs, especially once one reaches several years of experience.

People are hard on him because he's obviously misrepresenting himself. He claims his crowd worked for a long time as V250 partners or held high positions in house. If that's true they would have saved millions and be doing fine. The reality is that he's making stuff up. Not clear why he'd do this but its a big world and all kinds of people post on anonymousmessage boards.

920: I didn't see where this guy claimed to have been a Biglaw Partner or GC at Dow Chemical. I believe he said only that he had a good career in law for some years before the profession got glutted and that he went to a T6. This justifies reference to mental illness, laziness and incompetence?

9:20 Did you see the articles about Mary Jo White's appointment to the SEC? She has probably a net worth $40 million or more with her husband. She has been a Debevoise partner and he a Cravath partner since a few years after they graduated from law school just shy of 40 years ago. Both are 65 years old. Surprise, both are working.

Maybe you believe that no one with a few million dollars would toil away as a lawyer. That is just not true.

I know plenty of two partner couples toiling and trying as hard as they can to stay in the game.

People in New York who are of a certain age bought cheap real estate. It is millions in many cases now Abovethelaw recently covered a vastly appreciated townhouse of a Shearman & Sterling partner - from about $800,000 when he bought it to over $7 million now, and he is still working.

It is simply not true that every lawyer who has a few million dollars would not be working or would not be working in Biglaw.

One thing about law firms is that they generally do not have great retirement benefits. Partners and long service lawyers may be paid by the law firm for a limited time when they leave but not after that. There are lawyers (not Mary Jo White, who is very rich) who need the continued income to pay for kids in college, or who simply have insignificant retirement benefits and need to keep on working or they will have to live in a manner they do not like in retirement. I had an older colleague in another city who worked well past age 70 as counsel to a major firm because he had no significant retirement benefits.

Some lawyers, like the Whites, just love working even if they in no way need the money.

By the way, I am not making anything up. Many colleagues are dropping like flies from the legal profession. No joke. It is unbelievable.

The ones who are safe for now are generally either much younger than me, have a lot of business (that describes some partners I know (a few partners have little business, but they are the minority)) or are in house in strong practice areas. There are also a few people who did nothing else with their lives but practice law, and those few have their jobs.

There is a vast majority gone from their lawyer jobs and not voluntarily. It did not happen overnight. Most of these lawyers were in great shape workwise 10 years ago. They have gradually been dropping off the legal landscape since then. It is not performance. It is something systemic about abrupt job losses in the legal profession and really not other legal jobs to go to.

The real shame here is that the federal government's subsidy of law schools keeps an ongoing glut in the profession and hurts almost all practitioners. Law faculty do not care, as they are either crooked or oblivious.

Uncle Sam should care. Cranking out more and more indebted lawyers who have debt backed by you will hurt taxpayers and ruin what's left of this "profession."

Not everyone can own a house, and not everyone can be a lawyer. Stop fucking around with the economy, please.

It doesn't hurt almost all practitioners. Grads of third rate law schools don't pull down salaries for smart, hardworking kids who come out of top schools. And the third rate law schools got a three year party on the gov't tabs. As for taxpayers, there's comfortable running billion dollar deficits to pay for the world's largest military and the world's most inefficient health care system. I don't think they care about having an inefficient legal education system.

Yes they do, dipshit, but in a more attenuated way. Mr. T6 can't get a job because while he'd drop down a notch or two on the prestige scale for gainful work, the troglodytes are already there. Glut is for workers at all levels from Cravath-caliber to Cooley-caliber.

People who think BigLaw partners do not lose from the glut need to think again. Today there is a brutal retirement policy of shipping law partners out long before they are ready to retire. The partners who are working are subject to brutal business production and billable hours targets. Partner jobs disappear at the drop of a hat.

I do not think most lawyers escape the glut. Most lawyers are hurt by the glut and hurt very severely. Even those at the top of the profession.

Maybe Obama and Bill Clinton escaped, but very few other lawyers have a career that is in tact, no matter how good their academic record or work experience.

Today Hofstra grads may be partners or associates in big law firms. Those Hofstra grads take the positions they hold away from the T6 grads who also want those jobs.

Instead of the big law firm retaining the T6 grad for 20 or 30 years (as used to happen in the midsized law firm from which the big law firm was formed), the big firm can now get a succession of Hofstra people to hold associate and ultimately a few partner jobs.

The net result is that the opening of Hofstra Law School in the 1970s has put some T6 grads out of work.

I did not graduate from Hofstra. Many esteemed colleagues did, and there is no question that they are excellent lawyers.

The problem is that 10% of Hofstra or whatever the number is (it could be a lot higher) gets very good jobs. However, with the glut of lawyers, the net result is that they leave an equal number of lawyers from higher rated law schools unemployed, and of course the other 90% or whatever the right number is of Hofstra is unemployed to begin with.

Hofstra should have never been allowed to open a law school because there was no room for additional law grads even back when it opened.

The same goes for all the very top law schools who increased their class sizes over the years.

If the supply and demand were balanced, lawyers would be able to work for a career. We would not be facing staggering job losses long before we want to stop working.

February 15, 2013http://www.law.com/jsp/ca/PubArticleCA.jsp?id=1202588541180

SAN FRANCISCO — Add a little bit of revenue. Subtract partners. Control costs. That math helped a number of California law firms boost their profitability in 2012 despite shaky demand for legal services ... Struggling to raise the top line, firms like Orrick have found that one sure way to boost their numbers is to shrink, law firm consultant Peter Zeughauser said ... partners are often all that is left to cut. Having laid off associates in droves a few years ago and given de-equitization a try, firms are increasingly cutting to the chase and showing underperforming partners the door ....

It really is hard to understand why existing law schools want more competition. Perhaps as the number of applicants declines, existing schools will come to the conclusion that they need to resist the opening of new schools and support the closing of weak schools. As the job market contracts, one can expect a similar contraction in the number of applications to law school.

Similarly, while big law benefits from having a big pool of potential employees, a glut of attorneys means more competition for them. There are relatively few areas of highly specialized work, like securities. A big chunk of big firm work consists of routine matters like insurance defense. Corporate clients have discovered that smaller boutique firms can offer comparable service for a much lower price. Big law will increasing find itself competing against smaller and nimbler firms.

I suspect once the law schools and big law arrive at the conclusion a glut of attorneys is not good for them, the glut will end.

You know 5:49, When I was working n midlaw I once asked General Counsel of a very large insurance company whether corporations tended to go with biglaw because if they lost the person who picked the firm could say: "I gave it to biglaw, what else could I have done?!" He said absolutely rght. Nimble doesn't cover the ass of the schlep who picked the firm that lost millions of the company's money.

As a solo, I really don't have much sympathy for big law firms. However expecting that they will set up clinics on their own dime, hiring law grads whom they would have otherwise never employed, and properly supervise them. (Say one partner per 8-10 baby lawyers) is delusional. Especially since corporations today are sophicated consumers and will be watching for billing which would serve to transfer their payments for service to support such an fools errand.

It is crazy for Farmer to suggest that a tenant in a landlord tenant dispute needs legal counsel. The judge ought to be able to explain the legal issues to the tenant and then give the tenant time to do any work to prove their case themselves. There should be templates available in New Jersey for this purpose. The bar could prepare them on a volunteer basis, but of course will not do so.

It is hard to imagine that someone who is paying $2,000 a month rent is going to want or be able to pay legal fees on top of that. It is just not worth it to spend money on a lawyer in a landlord tenant dispute unless one is losing a rent controlled apartment in New York City, which is of course a valuable asset.

Any other type of landlord tenant dispute, the lawyer is likely to cost extra money that the tenant will never get back.

Aside from NYC's maze of rent controlled and rent stabilized units landlord tenant law isn't that complicated. If people have money the landlord's attorney is smart enough to work out a stay on the warrant of eviction so long as the tenant repays the back rent on an agreed-upon schedule. Sometimes you can get people without money a little extra time but that's about it.

Given that some projections have there being almost a 2:1 ratio of JDs to attorneys and every state in the union is oversupplied with lawyers except 1 or 2 of the mountain states, you're probably not far off.

I would instantly gain respect for the ABA if they advocated a 3-year moratorium on law grads for the good of the profession. $omething tell$ me they won't take that $en$ible $tep.

There is a brutal point to be made here. We (as in my partners and I) set up out own firm and we are doing pretty well (touch wood), securing clients and business, much from BigLaw. But we run into a lot of lawyers, many very prestige BigLaw, quite a few former senior partners who are trying to build their own stores and failing, and we can see many of the reasons that they are failing.

At the heart of the issue is that the massive growth in legal education over the last 30 years, including huge growth in the size of the T-14 law schools classes themselves (some of the T-14 have tripled and quadrupled, most have doubled in size) has been achieved by letting in a growing number of people who are unsuited to being lawyers - even people with high GPAs and LSAT scores. It is not just the toxic business practices in BigLaw (though they exist), it is that a large number of JDs should not be lawyers.

I would like to make a request of LawProf to disallow the "you are a moron, dipshit,etc." "that's why you are an unemployed loser" comments. There is no need for that on this board, regardless at whom they are directed.

Requesting people to show a little class won't result in anything, so I am requesting that LawProf have a little more control over this board. Such comments really degrade the quality of the conversation and of the subject. The blog would be much improved without them.

I've been telling you this from day one of your blog. Most of us lived through this crap - no need for a scholastic study to find out the "truth" or where all of this is headed. I truly hope this is just a reminder of the current reality and not some sort of revelation.

At the very least, thank god all the arguments over transparency vs. law school loans is over as well as all the idiots attempting to insert politics into the discussions by attempting to blame skyrocketing tuition on budget cuts instead of barely regulated student loans. I guess thats some sort of progress.

I agree that a lot of the political discussion is pointless, but some is relevant. However....

I am pretty leftwing according to most people and I have limited tolerance for the current Republican party including a bunch of lobbyists that seem to have taken over my preferred watering hole. That said, politics does impinge on the issue of reform.

Reforming the student loan system is a political question on which both the Republicans and the Democrats are inclined to be politically engaged - or dis-engaged. Thus when it comes to the for-profit sector Republicans are at the forefront of defending its ability to avail of Federal student loan programs (and the GI Bill) and ignore the dreadful outcomes that result - see, e.g., Rep. Virginia Foxx.

On the other hand, vocal commitment to social justice notwithstanding, many professors and in particular law professors have a strong relationship with the Democratic Party. Indeed, Obama, Warren, etc. were both sleekly well paid law professors (and Warren's husband still is.) Hardly surprising that they tend to not see the issues that the current student loan system is creating - they are the winners and their friends and colleagues are mostly the winners from the current system.

Indeed, the current student loan system is itself a weird and dysfunctional mix of free market shibboleths and state intervention - taking the worst from each. So the loan system is, on its face, a government intervention in the market. But the way in which tuition is set is supposedly "free market" notwithstanding the fact that the bulk of tuition money comes from a government intervention. Politically, it is a perverse mix of leftwing and rightwing ideas.

Notably, many left-wing market-interventionist professors, when the subject of tuition comes up become "dyed-in-the-wool" free market fundamentalists - to suddenly discover a commitment to social justice and "access" when it comes to defending the current approach to financing college and graduate school education.

That perhaps underlies my dislike of the political comments I see on this blog. A lot seem to be so ideological as to miss the point. Yes "social justice" and "access for minorities" are a good thing, but is saddling them with so much debt a good thing? Normally, with state funding of higher education there comes a lot of regulation - tuition for example, courses suited to market/economic demand, etc. The student loan model is a form of state funding, but eschews the regulation that usually goes with state money, in part by pretending that tax-payers money is not being spent. A purely private loan system with bankruptcy discharge would have better underwriting standards (more like having them at all) - but it is fair to say that minorities would be a higher risk and would find such loans harder to get. But why should Federal student loans not have underwriting standards??

Yes, I have ben arguing essentially the exact same thing, only not as coherently written out. Its rather simple - helping out the less needy and disenfranchised is an important social goal but this most definitely is not what student loans (in their current form) are achieving. You want to interfere in the marketplace to help people out? Great....but you then need to regulate it intelligently. Instead we have the the worst aspects of two different systems.

MacK - 12:54 here. I have followed most of your comments here with interest. Impressed with your knowledge and contributions. I have been meaning to ask you if I could contact you anonymously with some questions re my career since you seem to know what you're talking about and I think, from your descriptions, we work in the same area of law. Should only take a few minutes of your time and I don't want to do it here for obvious reasons. If not, I understand.

The problem is how do I provide I make contact confidentially. Perhaps we can rely on the good offices of Professor Campos. And who knows- you may decide that I am little more than the plump fraud that so many accuse me of being.

Well we can do that or just set up a quick fake gmail account - I have dozens for various things...and I'll email you.

Funny - I guess I missed people calling you out as a fraud despite having read this thing since its beginning (don't get to every comment section). Just remember a few people calling you long-winded and insults of that nature. But anyone with a strong opinion and recognizable identity is going to take a hit. Weird that they would pick "fraud" though...its quite apparent you know what the hell you're talking about. I mean you can be some sociopathic law student but that would be at Kaiser Soyze level trolling.

Maybe BigLaw's hiring more staff attorneys and temporary workers is not a bad thing.

The traditional hiring and retention model in big law firms is severely broken because it has left so many lawyers who once worked in big law firms out of work. Big law firms can hire these people back for almost nothing on a temp basis. In fact, the pay is usually decent, but the jobs do not last.

My T6 law school class has very few people left with real legal jobs. My class was almost half the size of the current class at my T6. There have to be a lot of people who would temp at a large law firm in a heartbeat.

Whole practice areas where BigLaw is regularly adding first years have few to no ongoing jobs after big law. Lots of alums would do anything to get back to work.

Commenters on this blog can talk about mental problems or being a jerk, but too few ongoing jobs for experienced lawyers relative to the numbers of experienced lawyers speaks for itself. Many or most lawyers coming out of the firms in weak practice areas are simply going to be out of work.

It still comes down to much too many lawyers.

It also comes down to the law schools abusing the system by giving rosy first year employment numbers when the real ongoing employment numbers are a disaster.

Any 8 plus year lawyer who gets a staff attorney job at a large law firm from a T6 is lucky. If you are a 45 or 55 year old mother or minority from a T6, you have hit the jackpot with a staff attorney job. You are likely doing better than a high percentage of your law school class. Same if a T6 can get temp work that generally keeps that person employed.

It is time to get real numbers, guys. Time for the public to know how many lawyers we are talking about - how many in temp jobs, how many unemployed once we get a few or several years away from graduation. This touting of 90 some odd percent first year employment when the truth is that there are few real long-term ongoing jobs for even the T6 lawyers has got to be put to rest.

The absence of these employment numbers fuels this blog, but it also leads to a lot of hardship. If the truth is that only half the class at a T6 has a job 20 or 30 years out, that truth is going to help the legal profession out of its mess. It will be much easier for an experienced lawyer to get a non-legal job once the true sky high employment numbers are out there, even for the top law schools.

I'm not sure how being a contract or non-partner track associate means you have more job stability. I don't think we should assume that firms will keep these associates around permanently or that there won't be some system in place.

And, assuming that firms do keep these attorneys, they are just going to hire fewer first years. As time goes in, the firms won't need to fill these positions so there will be even fewer jobs. I consider like PI now , in a way, hiring is way down in part because the people who get those jobs aren't leaving. They will hang in for 10 years of LRAP if they can.

"I'm not sure how being a contract or non-partner track associate means you have more job stability."

Exactly! Firms have no interest in keeping staff attorneys. Why would they? If someone's there 2-3 years, they'll start to ask for a raise or expect benefits or prestige or a shift to partner-track. NEXT!

Even if there was stability and it was a job you got to keep for 10 years, all that would do is lock out next year's graduates from getting those positions, 'cuz there ain't no way BigLaw will hire every year once they've got a full stable of staff attorneys.

You're not creating jobs at all. You're just moving some of the sweatshop doc review culture up a few floors for the benefit of the boomerdouche in the corner office.

These staff attorney and short-term positions are a lot better than unemployment. The problem of law schools and then big law firms starting thousands of first years in jobs where they will not be able to continue working is a worse alternative. That is what is happening to many lawyers today.

If at a very minimum getting a first year job likely offered the lawyer the ability to work as a lawyer for a reasonable career, at least those who made the first cut would have something.

Now we have the worst of both worlds. The intial 50% who do not get jobs are have nots. Many who do get initial jobs are also have nots a few years down the road.

You are not talking doc review here, but real lawyer work. Drafting documents, researching the law, advising clients on questions.

If a law student could just rely on, a get a job, I have a reasonable career. If not, I have to look outside the law, we would have much better outcomes, and nowhere near the 700,000 to one million law grads who are not working as lawyers.

Did you not read what I wrote? Grads will be getting even fewer jobs and with no greater security. They are not getting a better deal or a longer career out of getting off the partnership track. They will be taking these jobs because it is the best job they could get. Contract attorneys may even be working part time as the need demands.

The contract attorneys who are experienced lawyers who fill some niche the firm needs are just as vulnerable to cutbacks.

The traditional structure in Big Law has no jobs for those 20 or 30 years out who do not make partner. In many cases, that means no work. Contract work and staff attorney work is better than no work, unless of course a lawyer has the ability to move to another totally different type of job from law.

From the standpoint of those who are law students or just out of law school and unemployed, you may not like it, but the changes enable more experienced lawyers to hold jobs which they would not meet the qualifications for in big law firms because they have too much experience.

By the way, we would know what is happening to lawyers 20 or 30 years out if we just got the d___n numbers.

The problem for the last decade has been that alumni of big law often do not meet the qualifications for any legal jobs because all of these jobs have limits on the experience a lawyer can have as a condition of employment. At least contract and temporary work may enable a broader cross section of lawyers to work. It does not appear that one needs less than 8 years of experience to be a temp or a contract lawyer.

Hilarious. Have you ever done it? Any kind of white collar or sales work in any industry is miles better than contract work. Same with stable blue collar jobs. That firms allow this sweat shop crap while under the guise of all of us partaking in "a profession" with "professional" standards and ethics is unconscionable. You don't know what the F you're talking about.

Responding to MacK's post. Politics is the determining factor in the law school scam because the Federal Government is providing an endless supply of student loan money to law students while demanding no accountability from law schools.

This October I had a conversation with now Senator Chris Murphy (D) Connecticut. (who is also a lawyer) I laid out the issue concerning the overproduction of lawyers, and to be fair, he did give me five minutes to state my case. Then he looked at me and said "I don't think we should tell students, what they can, and can't study".

This is the level of analysis the democratic party seems to bring to this problem. Until we change the political classes understanding, there will be no change in Washington D.C.

Cracks in the foundation are starting to appear though. In the SOTU address, President Obama mentioned tying the availability of student loans to the value of the degree. Also, the College Scorecard contains an employment section. It’s blank, but it does at least encourage students to contact the schools and dig a little deeper. Something the schools are most certainly afraid of. If you google “College Scorecard,” you’ll see that academics are already coming out of the woodwork asserting the value of a degree should not be measured by post-graduate employment prospects.

Well of course, in general, "politics" is the problem because this is poor public policy but that wasn't how the term "politics" was being used above. It was more specific....that people were relying on their larger political world view (republicans are cutting budgets) to explain the entirety of why tuition has skyrocketed.

If you do look at the Georgetown survey, there is a little room for growth. Employment law is growing. Some corporate is growing - likely the derivatives area from the want ads, and not as much general corporate.

Law schools could try to identify growing practice areas and offer internships to both new grads and experienced lawyers in areas where the demand is growing.

It does not help to be from Cravath and from a top school with good grades if a lawyer is stuck in bankruptcy law and the demand for bankruptcy lawyers is falling through the floor.

Why is it Deans, their enablers, and other pontificators believe that suggeting an apprentice system is something new? In other common law systems, a period of apprenticeship, called "Articles," is required before becoming licensed. In England, the period of Articles is two years after law school and requires the law clerk to rotate among several departments in a law firm such as litigation, business transactions and conveyancing. In Canada the period of Articles is more or less one year, depending on the province. While serving Articles, the law clerk will attend a series of lectures from the provincial bar association and take a series of exams.

Articling is a great system and provides a much needed segue from law student to lawyer. One of the main problems with legal education in the US is that it is completely divorced from practice. We would do well do require articles as a preconidtion to receiving a law license.

But requiring articles, or any other type of apprenticeship will do absolutely nothing to increase the employment of new lawyers. The problem is upstream rather than downstream.

If you look at the Canadian Stats from LSAC, you will see that there are about 8,000 Canadian applicants for law school every year:

http://www.lsac.org/lsacresources/data/three-year-volume.asp

From my brief calculations (adding number of students enrolled in first year from the Canadian law schools) there were just under 3000 first year law students in Canada in 2012:

http://www.lsac.org/jd/choose/canadian/default.asp

compared with 55,800 admitted first year students in the US (2011 stats from LSAC).

Canada has a population of about 35 million compared with the US population of about 315 million.

If more Canadian lawyers are employed than their US counterparts, it's not because they have an apprentice program, it's because there are proportionally fewer of them.

And by the way, the tuition in Canadian law schools is under C$10,000.

A friend was recently hired by a large tech company, in a technical role. She completed law school at night, and afterwards inquired about transferring to the legal department. Recruiting replied that they will only consider people with 1 or 2 years of big firm experience (also, that they get applications from legal luminaries for these positions! Not some piddly TTT night school graduate.)

This amuses my friend as she knows that 1 or 2 years in big law provides literally no expert knowledge. It's just another way the legal profession is stratified and ossified. After all, if the existing lawyers all took that path, then it's *obviously* the only way to find "talented" legal minds.

It's all such crap... The sooner this profession dies/transforms into something else, the better. I just feel sorry for the folks stuck in legal hell...

All y'all are (by which I mean, people who precede me in these comments, are going to get served with a Civil Rights law suit by one Steve Diamond for suggesting that law profs should earn ANY LESS THAN THE MAXIMUM THEY CAN EXTRACT FROM STUDENTS. Also the AAUP don't like you either.